Human communication can get hopelessly jumbled and seriously weird. Especially when sign makers get drunk, depressed or just disinterested in the messages they need to convey. Then sign hilarity hits a new, unequaled high - and drivers everywhere look at these examples in stupefied wonder: how something like this could end up on a government road? And where do I go from here? (see our headline for answer)

Northern Irelanders do not mince words.(they just take them from the Old Testament)

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30 Comments:

Hey, I used to have a Born to be Chicken in my old neighbourhood. Not bad food.

Here's another cute restaurant sign for you. Not photographed well because I was standing outside an imposing massage parlour with security cameras. http://www.daehanmindecline.com/digital/20080419hoehyunhighrise/49.JPG

There is a restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan, called the Marijuana restaurant. The sign features a brightly-colored cannabis leaf and the word "marijuana". I'll look around and see if I can find a picture somewhere.

those zig zag lines are also used in Switzerland (they tell you not to stop there) in Croatia, in Slovenjia and we have them here in London, too, on the bus lanes. Maybe they look odd in America, but here in Europe are really popular!

Cabbages and Condoms is a famous restaurant in Thailand run by the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) of Thailand to promote condom use. My parents went there on vacation.

http://www.geom.unimelb.edu.au/pda/ccrest.htm

The "don't throw your baby in a dumpster give it to a fireman or a nurse" Probably has to do with "safe haven" laws that allow "a parent to legally surrender newborn infants 7 days old or younger at a hospital, police station, or manned fire station without facing criminal prosecution."

On the door of the server room of our school is (and for as long as I can remember, has been) a sign that says:

"Bitte atention! This room is fullfilled mit specialelectronische equippment. Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere! also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights."

All the previous admins have been students of our school like me, and we have excellent German and English programs, so I can only count this as a creative attempt at mixing the languages... thought I'd post ot anyway.

The 9th sign from the bottom with a lots of japanese characters (and with the "This sign is to prevent foreign tourists from getting lost"), has something written in italian which reads: "Stà sul senter ostia", and can be translated (probably from a venetian dialect) into:"Stay on the signed path, goddamit!"

Update: somewhat alien to Americans, this kind is often seen in Europe to mark "no parking" space.

Those are NOT "no parking spaces". The lines are drawn in a way that they get closer to eachother at the end, when you drive over them a constant speed, it looks like you are speeding up (kind of an optical illusion). It's used near pedastrian crossings or busstops to improve safety.

In Austria these zigzag markings are used specifically to mark driveways, basically saying: "Don't even think of parking here, it#s my friggin' drive!". I guess it is indeed related to the bus stop in the picture (the blue/white/black sign is the typical Eastern European pictogram for bus stop).

The red circle with the blue sections is indeed a "no parking/stopping anytime" sign, but it#s missing one blue slice :-D